Spread the Word – Getting married
¿Te vas a casar dentro de poco? Entonces aquí te dejamos este artículo para que sigas organizando tu boda y aprendas inglés al mismo tiempo.
One of my colleagues has recently announced that she’s getting married next year (congratulations Irene!) and as some of us here at King’s Training have also recently celebrated wedding anniversaries, this month’s Spread the Word is about all things related to the big day.
Traditionally the first step towards marriage is getting engaged. In days gone by, a man would ask his prospective father-in-law for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Nowadays, people tend just to propose or pop the question directly. The proposal is then followed by an engagement (perhaps marked by the purchase of an engagement ring). The bride and groom-to-be are for the moment fiancés (this is a French term, so he’s a fiancé and she’s a fiancée).
Then the focus is on organising the nuptials (the wedding ceremony) and everything around it. The first step is to name the day and choose venues for both ceremony and reception (the post-ceremony party). And the ceremony itself could be religious at a church or civil at a registry office. It doesn’t even have to be a marriage service – a commitment ceremony is where two people publicly state their commitment to each other in a union that is similar to a marriage but without legal status.
Before the wedding day itself there are also other traditional events that can be held, such as the stag night/party for the groom and his party and the hen night/party for the bride and her friends. In Britain at least, these tend to me quite raucous affairs, with the participants in fancy dress and drinking too much alcohol. Because of this, some pubs and bars actually ban stag and hen dos (a do is a colloquial British term for a party or celebration).On the other side of the Atlantic, a bride can enjoy a bridal or wedding shower where she receives presents from her friends. It definitely seems to be a slightly more civilised affair.
Weddings take a lot of organizing and there’s a lot of pressure to make it the happiest day of your life. A term that’s arisen in the last few years is bridezilla, used to describe a bride who becomes so obsessed with her wedding that she turns into a monster. I’m also happy to see (to balance it out) that the term groomzilla exists too!
So we come to the day itself when the happy couple ties the knot. Accompanying the bride we have her father, who will give her away, and the bridesmaids. With the bridegroom/groom there is the best man. Apart from giving support to the groom, his main function is to give a speech at the reception, most often including embarrassing anecdotes from the groom’s past. There will also probably be ushers (UK) or groomsmen (US), whose job is to show (usher) guests to their seats before the ceremony.
If all goes well, the couple exchange their vows and the vicar pronounces them man and wife. Hopefully, neither party has got cold feet (got too scared and changed their mind) and jilted the bride/groom at the altar (just not turned up!). No, most of the time everything goes wonderfully, the newlyweds leave the church in a cloud of confetti, later go on their honeymoon and then live a life of wedded bliss.
